Peter Kramer's big night leads Hampton past Highlands 73-58

NATRONA HEIGHTS, Pennsylvania – In Peter Kramer’s last basketball game of the 2022 calendar year for Hampton, he scored nine points in a win over North Hills on December 28th.

Despite Hampton winning the game, he knew that he could’ve scored more points in the game. Following that game, Kramer used his low-scoring performance as motivation during practice and that resulted in him starting off right in 2023.

Behind a season-high 37 points by Kramer, Hampton defeated Highlands on the road 73-58 Tuesday night to improve to 8-2 and start conference play with a victory.

“It feels great (to score a season-high 37 points),” Kramer said. “I’m not going to lie, I hit a couple shots that were outrageous, and when you’re feeling hot, you’re feeling hot, so I just went with the flow.”

Kramer, a junior, played his first two seasons of high school basketball at Shady Side Academy and won a 3A WPIAL basketball title with the Bulldogs last season. However, he decided to go back home this school year and play for the school district he lives in now in Hampton.

His teammates are happy that Kramer is now on their side.

“The last two years we played Highlands, they were in our section as well and they whooped us pretty much every time,” Hampton senior Brennan Murray said. “We wanted revenge against them, and we have Peter on our team again, so that helped. We stuck to what we knew, we knew the gameplan and it worked.”

Murray, Liam Mignogna, Eric Weeks and Robert Coll are all returning starters from last season and adding Kramer to relieve the pressure from scoring a lot has been helpful, with the idea that those players can focus a whole lot more on other assets of their game.

“It’s super helpful, he is a great scorer, great defender, just does everything well,” Murray said. “Being able to know that he can score off the dribble, or score for us when we need a big bucket or even just running out the clock or to get a big stop on defense, it really is helpful having him on the team.”

Going into the game, Highlands scored an average of 75.5 points per game and were led in scoring by Bradyn Foster (22,5 points per game) and Jimmy Kunst (17 points per game).

The Talbots limited Kunst to 16 points and Foster to 15 ppints in Tuesday’s game and didn’t allow any other Golden Rams to reach double figures.

“We were trying to keep Foster and Kunst decently low from scoring and I think we did a good job doing that,” Mignogna said.

Hampton head coach Joe Lafko was not present due to an illness but even without his leadership and expertise there, the Talbots got a big win on the road as that helps the team know they can battle through anything.

“We fought adversity before the game, we didn’t have our head coach we had our two assistant coaches step in,” Kramer said. “We had a good game plan and we just executed pretty well.”

The Talbots led 36-28 at halftime and at one point in the middle of the third quarter, the Golden Rams were able to trim the lead down to 45-42 in the middle of the third quarter. But the Talbots went on a 28-16 run to the rest of the way.

“In the first half, we didn’t rebound or box out really well, and I think at the end of the game, we just made some big plays,” Kramer said. “Brennan got some big boards and same with Liam so that definitely helped at the end.”

Hampton will next take the court on Friday, when they return home to play Indiana. And when they do, the Talbots will do so with confidence after beating Highlands.

“Highlands might be one of the best teams in the WPIAL,” Mignogna said. “I think the win was huge moving forward because it gives us confidence knowing we can play with anyone.”